High-speed hex-crawling - exploring with flyers

There are lots of good resources out there for the basics of hex-crawling. Do they still work when your players get a sudden boost of mobility?

In my case it was a flying skiff, perhaps it is seven-league boots, winged steeds, some sort of astral coach - anything that allows them to rapidly traverse the landscape. Note, this is not about 'point-to-point' things like teleports or portals, for those you can just use standard hex-crawl before and after the 'jump'.

In my home game the players assembled a flying skiff out of a number of things and set off into the north west of their realms on a quest. The practical challenge here is that at any significant height, visibility ranges are greatly extended so in theory the players can see everything in all the hexes around them. From own experience with light aircraft, yes, big terrain features can be broadly identified and you can rapidly get a sense of where those mountains, that desert, the coast is. But rivers can be hard to track and you can rapidly lose sight of anything smaller than a large metro area. Unless the party is taking the time to travel for optimum reconnaissance, I would say what they spot is tied to what they happen to cross over, through or by.

Practically this means you can retain a relatively low 'thing per hex' set up and it makes sense.

Shiny TTRPG links collection #36

Previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

Lots of good stuff in Knight at the Operas write up of "Model United Nations: the Most Popular FKR Game" and thoughts on "Iterative Design".

Orbital Crypt talks character creation and how sub-optimal char-gen (for newbies) in D&D and its descendents have left folk scalded on the concept of picking up new systems

Sidney Three Nine Three writes a good thread on information flow in games

Skerples has OSR: Baboons, Goblins, and Bicameral Kobolds - "Really interesting fights tend to have three or more sides. In the absence of any other options, one side suitably disinhibited monsters can easily become two sides."

EldritchMouse writes Ladder Tables Or, A Random Table With A Memory

In Tomb for the Soul weaver.skepti.ch looks at RPG as inheritors of an ancient trend in escapism.

D&D campaign share on Roll20 dips: 5e under 50%

tl;dr: new Orr Report on Roll20 stats shows D&D 5e share of campaigns dipping in favour of Call of Cthulu, others.

The new Orr Group report for Q2 2021 has dropped and I chucked the numbers into my big sheet and saw some interesting trends. Note, the numbers quoted on the blog post that accompanies the report do not match the numbers in the report itself. For the purposes of this exercise I am going to compare just the numbers in the report to the numbers in previous reports and not try to figure out why their own article is different. Given that and looking at all the reports since 2019 we see what is beginning to look like a sustained fade in D&D 5e share of campaigns.

Of course this is coupled with a ramp up in players from ~ 5 million to more than 8 million over the same time.

Review: Midgard Campaign Setting

tl;dr - dark fantasy campaign setting with great coiled narrative springs and lots of adventure hooks

I grabbed this as part of the 'DriveThruRPG hiking their colour printing rates' rush - mostly driven by the fact that I liked the look of the Southlands book, liked the general vibe of Kobold Press and figured I would give their core setting a look. In all I am coming at this setting line completely backwards - I bought and reviewed Dark Roads & Golden Hells, the planar supplement for this setting a while back. I backed the Southlands kickstarter, and now finally I pick up the setting core book. At a chunky 300 pages, I am quite content with what I got and it still stands up to this haphazard approach of mine.

First impressions is this is a big block setting book, even though just 20% bigger than a 5e hardcover like Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica it feels a lot thicker due to the paper quality. Art throughout is nice, varied but coherent with nice page border design that looks good without being overly busy or intrusive as you read through it. Primarily written as Pathfinder compatible, there is also a section on using it with the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) system. I picked it up with a view to using it at 3.5e or 5e tables and am finding plenty to use in the fluff alone.

Shiny TTRPG links collection #35

Previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

A review of Gardens of Ynn - after 3 full uses of the module at different tables.

D&D Monster Reaction Charts Compared on Leon Atkinsons blog.

A digest of "Unexpectedly powerful lessons I learned from MasterClass and applied to GMing" by u/retrolleum.

D.I.O: Alternate Avernus Campaign

tl;dr: sketching out the Blood War centred campaign I wanted Descent into Avernus to be.

Jolted by this Do It Ourselves rallying cry by the Grumpy Wizard I was thinking of something that annoyed me for a bit. Effectively this is the same effect as when you see a trailer and anticipate a certain amazing movie - and then you don't get that (maybe the movie was good or bad, but it wasn't what you envisioned).

I got that same thing with Descent into Avernus. I have been tracking along the Avernus: Remixed series on Alexandrian and I feel entirely justified in my initial 'huh' reaction to DiA. As an old Planescaper I feel the forces of Hell should get more respect. Either they are a creditable threat to the multiverse or they aren't. To me the whole scale of Descent into Avernus felt wrong - that a single city on a single Prime planet could attract notice of the Archduke essentially running the Blood War felt off.

But to follow the Grumpy Wizards direction, enough wailing, time to rub some dirt on it and go get it fixed.

Better Opposition - d4 Effective Organisation Types

tl;dr: some templates for organisations let you know quick strengths and weaknesses for effective groups.

Inspired by the freely-available thinking of a well known real world organisation that identifies the 'key ingredient' practices that make up various recipes for success. We can grab these archetypes for effective organisations and use them for villains or heroes depending on your needs. It gives us some ready-to-go bones that we can throw a skin over as appropriate for the organisation.

The four key archetypes are:
1. Leadership driven
2. Goal focused
3. Masters of their Craft
4. Team of Heroes